Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak confessed to regret having maintained a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after his first conviction for sexual crimes, in 2008, and before the opening of the wider investigation in 2019, but refused to have been part of any illegal activities.
“I can say with certainty that I regret the moment I met him in 2003,” Barak said in an interview with Israeli television Channel 12 broadcast on the evening of Thursday, February 12. “In all the 15 years that I have known [Epstein]I have never witnessed any occurrence or inappropriate behavior.”
Barak was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein at a major event in Washington in 2003 by former Israeli President Shimon Peres, who referred to him as being a “good Jew.” “I am responsible for all my actions and decisions. There is room to question whether I should have investigated further. I regret not having done so”, said the former governor.
In the same interview, the 84-year-old former Israeli prime minister was asked about the revelations that he stayed several times in Epstein’s apartment in New York between 2015 and 2019, justifying that it was useful when he visited the city, as he could leave his belongings there, highlighting that it is the “right of every citizen” to stay in a property belonging to someone they know, and there is no illegality in that. And he noted that, during this period, he was no longer heading the Israeli government, a position he held between 1999 and 2001.
According to the Times of Israel, Barak was also questioned by Channel 12 about statements he made in a 2014 recording, which is part of documents published by the US justice system, in which he told Epstein that “many young, beautiful girls, tall and slender, would come from Russia to Israel” and explained that he had told President Vladimir Putin that Russian immigration could offset the growth of the Arab population. The former Israeli leader justified himself, saying that he had used “an unfortunate choice of words, with associations with irrational stereotypes”, asking viewers if they did not speak the same way in private conversations. “I’m not proud of that choice of words, but I didn’t say that to Putin,” he added.
Ehud Barak also admitted that new material about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein could be revealed in the coming weeks, due to “the fact that he had a business and social relationship with him for 15 years.” But he assured that nothing “inappropriate” will be discovered. “I didn’t know the nature of his crimes until 2019, and you probably didn’t know either,” he concluded.
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